As a historian, you obviously know what it was 20 years ago and what it is today.
As well, I understand there are some further miscommunications and fear-mongering that goes on.
There are two types of water uses in the oil sands, are there not? There's water that's used for a cooling process, where they can actually put the water back into the rivers. It's not contaminated, because it was used to cool down things. Then there's the other type, which is used in the process itself. There's only one oil sands plant that is allowed to put any water back from that processing.
My understanding is that any water that contacts open oil sands has to be kept. In fact my understanding is that Syncrude recycles 100% of its water, Albian recycles 100% of its water, and CNRL recycles 100% of its water. When I say “recycles 100% of its water”, I'm talking about the water that's actually used for the oil sands process. The rest is kept in the tailings ponds.
Now that we have the technology to reclaim those tailings ponds, it appears we'll be able to put back not just 100% of the water they're using, but also the tailings ponds water. Is that correct, based on the assumption that the technology is there?And it is.